Comparison of cholesterol producing yeast Komagataella phaffii to parental wild type

Sterols affect many different cellular processes and, thereby, play an important role in health and disease. However, the impact of sterol dysfunction on cellular physiology is hard to study since sterols are essential. In this study, we conducted RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) analysis of yeast strains that produce cholesterol instead of ergosterol and investigated the cellular response mechanisms on the transcriptome level. Experimental design: We cultivated a parental K. phaffii strain (CBS 7435 his4(delta)) (n=4) and a cholesterol strain (MH458, erg5::DHCR7 erg6::DHCR24) (n=4) in minimal media containing 2% glucose, havested cells at early exponential phase, isolated total RNA and examined these samples. Total RNA was subjected to polyA selection and sequenced on an Illumina machine, producing 150 bp paired-end reads.